11.09.2005

peeeve

I needed to take a couple of things to the Post Office last night so they'd get out on time. I was terrifically tired before I left, but once in the car I was somehow rejuvenated; it's been a while since I've taken a drive just for the sake of doing it, and the music was good and it was lightning but not raining so the air was thick and it was very dark but for the flashes, so I was happy, and there was not much traffic so I could really move. I just kept going, past the Post Office (I did mail the letters)--headed east, out of town, toward The City. I didn't go that far, but I was out for probably an hour and a half, just driving. Thinking. Listening to myself think rather than doing those amorphous 'things' that suck the time out of my life.

By the time I recognized that I was heading back home, I was traveling east again, through the next town over. I'd wandered around the "water" area, through what must have been a terrific neighborhood before it became what it is today. There is a stoplight at the corner of the street that I came out on, and I was on a little rise, my car slightly up-turned, my blinker showing left.

There were two cars facing me, one in the straight lane and one in my opposite turn lane. We were probably 30 seconds from the green light when the car opposite mine started flashing brights. Not just a couple of blinks, but a psychotic disco-ball seizure-inducing fit of flashing. I don't think I've been coy about the fact that I drive a Honda Civic. My lights are the nice ones--I can see anything I want to see, and I don't have those hideous bluish-purple (are they halogen? I can't recall at the moment) lights that practically render oncoming traffic blind, totally defeating the purpose of better light (duh!). But the front profile of my car is so abbreviated that my lights do have to be aimed slightly upward, so I get flashed a lot when my lights are dimmed. I usually just ignore it, particularly if it's in town. They don't know, so why should I make a big point of flashing my brights in return and burning their retinas, just for the joy of being 'right'? If somebody's 2 miles away and flashing me, though, I'll give them the quick "just so's you know..." flash, and they'll cool it.

Well, this [expletive deleted] f*ckead (oh, yeah--just imagine what that expletive was!) was not going to cool it. The flashing continued, unabated but irregular (so I know it wasn't a short in their electricals), for the duration of the red light. I waited until the oncoming car had moved enough that I wasn't going to blind them (since they would have no clue what it was all about) and then just flipped the brights on, not even bothering to turn left.

The moral of the story: there are things that sort of bug me. And there are things that drive me kind of batty. And there are people that make me a little crazy. But there is probably nothing that makes me quite as irrationally pissed off as somebody who thinks that I didn't see the first goddamned time that they flashed their brights at me, and that I'm driving around with my brights on for the fucking fun of it. They're not "brights", they're just bright. And if you continue to flash your fucking brights at me, I'll incinerate your goddamned eyeballs and laugh while I do it.

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